Unnamed Ginger
by portionss-forfoxes
Summary: While the Doctor impatiently waits for Martha to emerge from a cafe bathroom in 1982, a redheaded mystery with a thing or two to say about his treatment of Miss Jones reveals herself.


Title: Unnamed Ginger  
>Author: That would be me<br>Characters, Pairings: 10th Doctor, Amy Pond, Martha Jones, some Ten/Martha, small mention of Ten/Rose, 11th Doctor, humorous scene for 11/Amy  
>Summary: While the Doctor impatiently waits for Martha to emerge from a cafe bathroom in 1982, a redheaded mystery with a thing or two to say about his treatment of Martha reveals herself.<br>Warnings: A bit of a crack!fic. Certainly AU. If you don't like Martha, don't read. If you don't like Martha, you should probably shy away from most of my fics. Just sayin'.  
>Rating: pg-13 for language; specifically, Amy calling Ten rude things<br>Notes: In this fic Amy is very feisty, the way I like her; very lighthearted, nothing really serious at all; no particular setting, probably just sometime S5 for Amy, S3 for Ten (you'll see, it'll make sense, I promise)

**Unnamed Ginger**

The Doctor checked his watch for the umpteenth time. How long did it take for a woman to go to the bloody bathroom, anyway? They had placed to go, people to see, future Sexiest Men Alive to save from alien seductresses disguised as Southern belles! Was a touch-up on makeup really so crucial?

"Martha, hurry up!" he ordered to no one in particular. He needed her around in order to make themselves at all interesting to the teenager who would one day be half of the highest-profile breakup in all of time and space (only closely rivaled by the split of Chief Dancer Nämi Openga and her husband George on the planet Nucleus in 12001). The Doctor smiled fondly to himself, recalling how Martha, upon discovering the identity of this eighteen-year-old Missourian boy, had determinedly tipped back a shot of good old-fashioned Southern whiskey and pledged to him with her usual dead-set demeanor, "If I don't snog Angie's man by the end of the week, the entire purpose of time-travel will mean absolutely nothing." Of course, once they'd discovered there was a hostile alien lady-friend in the mix, the Doctor had expected Martha's aims to waver—fortunately for him, her number two goal was to get rid of the Playboy Alien, but number one was still "snog Achilles."

Sighing, the Doctor now seated himself at one of the outdoor tables the café had. It was a hot, humid day in the American South; the sun beat down tirelessly in unflinching yellow rays. Packs of sixteen-year-old girls strolled by at sluggish paces on the sidewalk, their shorts as close to underwear as one could get, their faces red and layered with sheens of sweat. Their boyfriends trailed behind, toothpicks in between their teeth, the perfect stereotypical picture of Southern youth, "sir"-ing and "ma'am"-ing anyone they happened across. At first the Doctor simply thought they were being friendly, but he soon realized they truly knew every single one of the people they greeted. Everyone knew everyone else in this small town, and instructions for the passing-on of well-wishes to one's mama were handed out like candy.

The Doctor finally gave in to the sun and removed his suit-coat. He thought to himself that he really should consider getting a short-sleeved dress shirt for hotter settings like these, but knew he never actually would. He smiled, leaning back in his chair. Despite his oft-displayed keenness for hyper-activity, he did, occasionally, enjoy a spot of peaceful people-watching. Though he'd never admit it, when he came down to it, people were quite fascinating. Each human with his own life, his own home to return to with controlling mamas to please and distant fathers to resent; secrets to keep and the rise of MTV to witness (it _was _1982, after all).

He'd started adding a new element to his people-watching of late. He'd watch for people who reminded him of her, whether it be in their mannerisms, or their impossibly large smiles, or the tops of their blonde heads. Sometimes he looked for them while Martha was talking to him, and then he'd hear "Doctor? Doctor. Doctor! What are you looking at?" And he'd say, "Nothing," just because he knew she knew it wasn't. She wouldn't _understand _people-watching. She wasn't Rose.

Suddenly the Doctor noticed an out-of-place figure among the crowd of Southern youths. She was a ginger—the gingery-est ginger he'd ever seen, hair a captivating fire-truck red—and her skin was pale and freckled, her eyes clear green like a secluded lake. What was more, she stuck out because she was dressed strangely, almost…twenty-first century-like. And to top it all off, she was making her way right…towards…him!

"Hello there," she greeted. She was British—Scottish, even. Certainly didn't belong in a tiny town of Southwest Missouri in the U.S. of A. "I know who you are, you don't know who I am, it doesn't matter—you'll find out in due time, I expect. But I'm straying from the script here. And I don't just mean that as a figure of speech." She popped a hip with annoyance, and rolled her eyes. "That's right, he wrote me a bloody script. It's somewhere around here…" She began digging in her pockets, biting her lip in concentration. "Aha!" Here it is!" she exclaimed, seizing something from her left back pocket. She un-crumpled it and cleared her throat with a hint of irony. She shot the Doctor a one-raised-eyebrow glance from over the top of the lined paper. "Eh-ehm. 'Hello, sir. At this time, I am not at liberty to reveal my name, but I know you are the Doctor, and I have a brief matter I would like to discuss with you." She dropped the paper to her side momentarily, and and improvised with, "Well, first off, he told me everything about you and your friend Martha, and how you treated her like shit—by the way, shame on you!" With a frown she slapped his arm.

"Ow!" said the dumbstruck Doctor.

"So anyway," Unnamed Ginger was saying, "he told me all about Martha, and I said 'I like the sound of her, I'd like to meet her,' and of course he said 'Absolutely not. Terrible idea, simply terrible.'" Here she dropped her voice significantly in imitation, then rolled her eyes again. "So then I said, 'At the very least you can let me go back and make sure he's not such a dick to her,' which you are, by the way. An absolute dick, you are. Dick." And she slapped him again.

"Ow!" said the even more dumbstruck Doctor.

"And then he was all like, 'Nooo! Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey spacey-wacey blah-blah-blah!' But eventually I convinced him to let me have my way. I always do." She appeared very pleased with herself for a moment. "But with conditions, of course," she sighed, indicating the unused script in her hand.

"So basically," Unnamed Ginger went on, in a business-like tone this time, "I know you miss Rose and all that, and boo-hoo, poor you, poor Doctor, everyone should feel sorry for him. Dick!" —followed by a third slap to the arm ("Ow!" said a now beyond imaginably dumbstruck Doctor)— "but that doesn't mean you're allowed to be blind to this wonderful, magnificent, downright _brilliant _woman you have before you. And hey, she actually is a full-grown woman, too, not barely-past-teenage like Rose and me. Take advantage of that. We're pains in the arses, teenagers."

"Yes, I can see that," the Doctor grumbled, rubbing his arm.

Amy wrinkled her nose at him, and despite the fact that she'd just called him a dick four consecutive times, she was now considerably offended by his small remark. There went the hip-popping again. "Wow," she said, shaking her head in contempt. "You really are the biggest arsehole of them all, just like he said. You're lucky he picked now and Martha's coming out in about sixty seconds, or I'd probably kick your scrawny little arse. You know, it's no wonder she lef—" By this time a skinny man in a tweed jacket and bow-tie of all things had leaped clumsily out of some nearby bushes, brushing leaves off as he scurried over to Unnamed Ginger with lurching steps and clamped a hand over her sassy mouth.

"Sorry, very sorry, sir!" he shouted over Unnamed Ginger's muffled shrieks and protests. "We'll just be on our way. But—in all seriousness..." He backed away down the sidewalk, virtually dragging his rude friend along, "...be nice to Martha. She's a wonderful girl. Really, just wonderful. You just don't realize it yet." All the Doctor could do was stare after them as they backed slowly down the street in an awkward, lurching dance; his mouth was agape, simultaneously appalled and bewildered.

Unnamed Ginger now managed to wrestle her friend's hand away from her mouth, and she screamed with impressive lung capacity,

"Help! My husband's abusing me! Help!"

"Sh-sh-ch-sshhh!" The bow-tie'd man scrambled to cover her mouth again, but not before she could shriek to the mountain-tops, "_Rape_!"

"Excuse me, sir," said a police officer with a drawl who seemed to appear out of nowhere. "Is there a problem here?"

There was a moment of shocked silence, and then the bow-tie'd man hissed, "Amy, run!" The two of them fled off down the street, hand-in-hand. The Doctor could hear Amy giggle as she ran.

"What's going on here?" came a familiar, sweet-tinted voice, and the Doctor turned around to find Martha stepping out of the cafe to stand beside the Doctor as he squinted down the street.

"I haven't the slightest idea," he answered truthfully, and then he looked at her, _really _looked at her.


End file.
